New Netflix special asks: What would it take to get you to commit murder?

New Netflix special asks: What would it take to get you to commit murder?

At any given moment, how close are any of us to committing an act as despicable as murder? What kind of circumstances could arise to push a person in that direction?

Those are questions The Push sets out to ask. The upcoming Netflix reality special stages an elaborate ruse in which a series of scripted events drive one unsuspecting man toward killing a living human.

A new trailer for the hour-long program, out Feb. 27, hints at the premise. There’s a big-money auction happening, and one of the event’s wealthy benefactors falls to the ground clutching his chest shortly before it begins.

Chris, the unwitting “star” of the program, is one of two participants who’s there when it happens. He’s subsequently drawn into a “web of lies” as the show’s 70 actors lead him toward participating in what the trailer suggests is a staged suicide.

The whole thing is a setup, of course, but Chris doesn’t know that. The Push is the work of Derren Brown, a British mentalist whom Netflix describes as a “psychological illusionist.” The reality special, an “audacious social experiment” is a consideration of how both authority figures and social pressures can manipulate an otherwise ordinary person in extraordinary ways.

The Push isn’t actually a new release. It’s one of two older Brown specials that originally aired in the United Kingdom and which Netflix has now picked up for re-release (the other is called The Miracle). Brown is also working on something completely new for the streaming giant, but no details have been released yet.

Even if The Push isn’t technically new, the trailer released on Tuesday and the alarming premise it introduces prompted quite a reaction.

Can’t get behind #ThePush. As a movie sure, as a reality show it’s a shitty idea. Let’s severely damage people psychologically for ratings. Let’s “push” someone into a truly dark place, a place that will haunt them and stay with them for the rest of their life. FUCK YOU @netflix!

What that new ‘Jessica Jones’ character means for the season and the series

Marvel’s Jessica Jones has been a revelation for women ever since it premiered in 2015. Not only did it present us with a deeply flawed and traumatized protagonist, it dealt with her history and insecurities head-on.

In Season 2, we still have a host of varied, complicated women; from Carrie Ann Moss’s struggling Jeri Hogarth to Rachael Taylor’s unraveling Trish to our newest character, played by Janet McTeer. It’s a pivotal role with DEEP complexity and physicality, the likes of which is rare for women in action shows – especially women of a certain age.

McTeer is first introduced as Dr. Leslie Hansen, a scientist linked to the ominous IGH, but we quickly learn that there’s far more to her. She has abilities like Jessica’s, but dialed up to 11; with her super strength comes a rampant rage – a dissociative disorder that’s a side effect of the experiments IGH actually conducted on her.

When that switch flips, she becomes incredibly volatile, but with an almost childlike fixation on the source of her distress. McTeer communicates all this with a clenched jaw and unwavering gaze – and that’s before all the stunt work.

“That was fun, you know, the idea of being someone who works really hard to control her emotions, control herself,” McTeer told Mashable at the Season 2 premiere in New York. “She doesn’t know how to do that particularly but she tries very hard in all kinds of different ways and doesn’t always succeed.”

Marvel’s Jessica Jones

And then there’s that Episode 6 reveal, the shaky word a disbelieving Jessica says after tracking her quarry back to the house where she lives: “Mom?”

At first, turning this new character into Alisa Jones feels like a bit of a MacGuffin for Jessica’s quest to figure out exactly who or what she is. The tragic loss of her family is one of Jessica’s most formative experiences, like so many other superheroes. It’s infuriating to think her mother was alive this long and that their paths never crossed. Alisa didn’t even seek her out.

Episode 7 addresses all of that in flashbacks, but it’s still maddening. Especially with an ostensibly retconned dead boyfriend plot for Jessica that ends up being her mother’s fault (that jacket reveal though…:crying emoji:).

As the season builds to a climax, it’s hard to reconcile those revelations with a forced mother-daughter vigilante bonding subplot. Sure, there’s a tenderness to Alisa tending her daughter’s bullet wound that we haven’t seen Jessica experience before, but Mama Jones is a ticking time bomb and combustion is all but inevitable.

Marvel’s Jessica Jones

By now, we know how this ends: Alisa goes rogue (Jessica with her, for a time) and there’s no reeling her back in. By the final episode, she’s lost the only person who could help her scientifically and joined Jessica in the dead boyfriends’ club – she also murders a detective in a surge of violent energy reminiscent of Kilgrave himself.

“I’ve never seen a woman play a part like this,” McTeer said. “I’ve seen men do it very often but you know, I’m a middle-aged woman, so that was fun. Hard, harder than playing it when you’re 25 because it’s very physical, but still great.”

“You do something like this and you hope someone will go ‘Oh, that’s a good idea, let’s do another one!'” she added. “‘Does an FBI agent have to be a man? Let’s make it a woman. Does that person really have to be a man? Let’s make it a woman.’ I’d like that to happen more.”

Offred is 1000% over it in new ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ teaser

The Handmaid’s Tale just served up an International Women’s Day teaser of Offred and her sisters fighting back. After a first season that explored women losing all their agency, Season 2 shows shows the women of Gilead refusing to be oppressed any longer.

The teaser is mostly a few flashes of footage and imagery – including Offred in front of a noose and a weeping Moira (Samira Wiley) – narrated with the emotionless cadence Elisabeth Moss perfected as Offred. She lists the requirements of the handmaid like commandments: “Wear the red dress, wear the wings,” and eventually, “Shut your mouth, be a good girl, roll over and spread your legs, yes ma’am, may the lord open.”

And then the teaser ends with a burst of frustration: “Seriously, what the actual f–”

The proposed deal, the Times reports, would see Netflix paying the Obamas to commission exclusive content, which would “highlight inspirational stories.” Exactly how many shows and episodes we can expect, whether these will be documentaries, mini-series or otherwise, has not yet been confirmed.

How much the Obamas will be paid is also still unclear.

Netflix currently boasts 117 million members in over 190 countries — quite the robust platform for the already social media-dominant Obamas to potentially leverage.

But the Times surmised that Obama wouldn’t be using the platform as “a direct answer to Fox News or Breitbart.com,” writing:

Mr. Obama does not intend to use his Netflix shows to directly respond to President Trump or conservative critics, according to people familiar with discussions about the programming.

Netflix isn’t the only streaming service interested in content commissioned by the Obamas it seems, with the Times reporting that executives from Amazon and Apple had also “expressed interest in talking with Mr. Obama about content deals.”